Chicago cop won't face charges for mistakenly shooting woman

Antonio LeGrier (R) father of Quintonio LeGrier, stands with family as he eulogizes his son during funeral services at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago. LeGrier, 19, was shot several times and killed by a Chicago police officer responding to a domestic disturbance call Dec. 26, 2015. Police at the same time mistakenly fatally shot LeGrier's neighbor, Bettie Jones.(Photo: TANNEN MAURY, EPA)

CHICAGO — Prosecutors announced Friday that no criminal charges would be brought against a Chicago police officer who fatally shot a baseball bat-wielding college student and mistakenly fatally-wounded his neighbor during a 2015 incident that came at a tense moment for police in the nation's third-largest city.

Within hours of the Dec. 26, 2015, shooting deaths of Quintonio LeGrier, 19, and his neighbor Bettie Jones, 55, police acknowledged that Jones was accidentally killed by the officer, Robert Rialmo, who was responding to a domestic disturbance involving LeGrier.

“After thorough review, the Office of the Cook County State’s Attorney has concluded that there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Rialmo did not act in self-defense in shooting LeGrier and Jones,” the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

The killing of Jones and LeGrier came at a moment when the city was already reeling from the release of a police video in late November that showed a white officer fatally shoot a black teen, Laquan McDonald, 16 times. The officer in that incident, Jason Van Dyke, is awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges.

LeGrier was in the midst of a mental health crisis when police were called to the home. A 911 dispatcher initially hung up on LeGrier and failed to dispatch police when he initially called officers. LeGrier told the dispatcher that he was being threatened, but refused to answer the dispatcher's questions and sounded as if he was also talking to someone else, according to the city's Independent Police Review Authority.

Minutes after the teen was hung up on, a man who identified himself as Quintonio's father, Antonio LeGrier, called 911 and requested help, saying that his son was attempting to break into his bedroom.

Rialmo said in a statement that he "had no choice but to use deadly force."

"Being right does not make it any less of a tragedy that two people are dead and I was the cause of their deaths," Rialmo said. ”I was pushed to the level of having to fire my weapon by Quintonio LeGrier in order to save my life, and that of my partner. If there was anything else I could have done besides using deadly force, I would have done it."

The Justice Department concluded in a broad civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department completed last month that Chicago officers too often use force against people in crisis situations "where force might have been avoided had a well-trained CIT officer responded to the scene and employed de-escalation techniques.”

Since the Jones-LeGrier incident, the department has bolstered mental health training for department's officers.

Police said LeGrier was wielding a baseball bat and was "combative" when officers arrived. Jones, who lived in another apartment in the multi-level apartment building, had opened the door for the responding officers and was headed back to her unit when she was struck by the gunfire.

Under Illinois statute, a judge or jury would have needed to conclude that Rialmo did not reasonably believe that he or his partner were in imminent danger of great bodily harm. The baseball bat LeGrier was wielding also may be considered a deadly weapon under state law.

“Similarly, the evidence does not support a prosecution for the death of Bettie Jones,” Eric Sussman, the first assistant state's attorney, wrote in a four-page report explaining the findings. “Under Illinois law, when an individual acts in self-defense and accidentally kills a bystander, he is not criminally liable for the bystander’s death.”

Kim Foxx, the Cook County State's Attorney, was not in office at the time of the incident. She left Sussman in charge of the case, because the law firm she worked for before being elected county prosecutor is representing Bettie Jones family in a civil lawsuit against the city.

Autopsy reports showed that LeGrier was shot in the chest, back, right buttock, left arm, and grazed on his left side and right shoulder. Jones was struck in the chest once.

After calling police, LeGrier's father called his downstairs tenant Jones and asked her if she would let police into the building when they arrived. Jones agreed, but against the wishes of a friend who was with her in her apartment, according to the report.

When police arrived at the scene, the report said Jones pointed police upstairs to guide the officers to the right location. At that point, LeGrier was coming down the stairs and heading toward Jones.

Jones appeared "to step back into her apartment; at which time, police fired shots in an attempt to stop Quintonio," the report said.

Rev. Marshall Hatch, a Chicago pastor who delivered the eulogies at the funerals of Jones and LeGrier, expressed outrage at the prosecutor's findings.

The finding of "a justifiable double homicide of a questionable victim and an innocent victim will not go down well in our community," Hatch said. "Nor should it."